


I Will Walk (500 miles)

by MintSauce



Series: The Halfway House [38]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: F/M, Ian x Mickey will come into it a little later, M/M, underage because Carl's only 17
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 18,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3771514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintSauce/pseuds/MintSauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family. Danger. Blood. Loyalty. </p><p>Love.</p><p>Carl thinks he understands them all, so do Ian and Mickey. Eddie's about to flip it all on its head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stitchandrepair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchandrepair/gifts).



> So, this is for Billie because she'll get the underlying references to my original stuff here. And because he's wonderful and everything should be for Billie, always! :D
> 
> This will feature Ian and Mickey, but I also wanted to write a bit about Carl and his boyfriend. Carl is bi in this, because I can see it happening and being realistic. 
> 
> Also, I like writing sociopaths in love!

Eddie’s five when his mother pushes him into the back of a closet and tells him to stay there. Later, it could have been ironic with the whole gay thing if only it really really wasn’t.

He’s five and he’s shaking as he watches through a small hole in the wood. He watches as the man swings an axe and cuts Eddie’s mother down like she’s a rag doll. He can see his mother’s guts spilling out like stuffing, the blood staining their cream carpet _redredred._

In the other room his father’s screaming. It’s not words, it’s just a long horrible sound. Like that time Eddie saw the neighbour’s cat fry on the electric of the railway tracks. This sound is worse though, because this is Dad.

Dad’s not supposed to scream like that. His dad’s always so quite usually. He’s not quite now, but Mama is.

Her eyes are open wide, unseeing and blank as he head lolls on her neck. Her lips are still moving slightly though, she’s still just barely clinging to life.

Later, years later, Eddie will wonder what she was trying to say. She wasn’t a religious woman, his Mama, but he thinks she was probably praying.

A little whisper of a sound slips from between her lips when a man dips a gloved finger into the cavity of her stomach. He paints something on the wall, a symbol that Eddie can feel burning into his brain.

He claps his hands over his ears and pushes himself into the back of the closet. He keeps his eyes tight shut until the police come to guide him out with careful hands and sorry faces. He keeps his eyes shut and tries to wish he’s just someplace else.

He’d think it was a dream, but Eddie’s imagination has never been that good.

 

*****

 

He sees Carl for the first time when they’re nine. He watches the joy on Carl’s face as he slams another boy into a locker. He crams him in and slams the door shut even though the boy doesn’t quite fit. The metal his him in the face.

Carl just laughs.

He laughs and laughs and laughs. And Eddie thinks he’s beautiful.

 

*****

 

The first time he speaks to Carl, its years later and they’re sixteen. He’s still so beautiful, so alive. It’s like there’s an electric current running underneath his skin; that wicked laugh and those bright, cold eyes.

He’s fascinated, but Eddie knows a crush when he feels one.

He’s come to terms with the whole gay thing a while ago. It’s not a big deal. There are much worse parts about himself.

Carl’s in the bathroom, cock in hand as he takes a piss and white powder on his fingers. He shoves one of them up his nose and snorts heavily. It’s pathetic really. Eddie just has to intervene.

“You’re doing it wrong,” he says.

“Fuck you,” Carl responds even though he can’t possibly know what Eddie means yet. He doesn’t look in the least bit bothered that he’s standing there, dick in hand whilst another guy stares at him. If he’d been bothered, he wouldn’t have left the bathroom door wide open for the whole party to see. “What?”

“The coke,” Eddie elaborates. He’s not really much of a talker, it feels weird. He’s like his Dad in that way. “You’re doing it wrong.”

Carl rolls his eyes. “Fuck you is how I’m doing it. Gets me high, what’s the problem?”

He shakes his dick and tucks himself away, not even bothering to wash his hands. He moves closer to Eddie, sizing him up even though Eddie towers over him like he does over everybody.

“I know you?” he asks, cocking his head to the side.

He looks like a dog when he does that and it shouldn’t be cute.

“Not yet,” Eddie says. He’s aware he probably sounds creepy, but Carl just throws his head  back and laughs. Eddie wants to reach out and touch him, wants to crawl underneath Carl’s skin and just burrow there.

Not many people know Eddie, but he likes it that way. He likes to fade into the background. It makes it easier to watch. It makes it easier to get away.

“Sweet,” Carl says and he brushes up against Eddie as he moves past, stepping unnecessarily close.

“Carl?” a girl Eddie doesn’t know pokes her head around the corner of the door. She frowns at the sight of them. “Babe, you coming? I’m bored.”

Carl shrugs. “Sure whatever,” he says and flashes Eddie a wide smile. “See you around, man.”

 

*****

After that, Eddie makes sure that Carl does indeed see him around.

He ‘bumps’ into him in shops, ‘stumbles’ upon him under the El. He generally just make shis presence known, no pressure. He just lets Carl know he’s there.

Carl starts to grin each time he spots him, like it’s a game.

“I could think you’re stalking me,” he says. He licks at the corner of his mouth, that stupid half-grin spreading over his face as Eddie watches.

He shrugs. “Maybe I am.”

Carl laughs again.

It’s like he doesn’t notice that Eddie’s a shark in the fish tank. Or maybe he does, he’s just not bothered, because if there is one thing all of Eddie’s watching has taught him over the years, it’s that Carl is a shark too.

“You want to get a beer some time?” Carl asks. “And by some time, I mean like, _now_?”

It’s hot and Eddie’s not really a massive drinker, but he’ll go wherever Carl wants him to. He narrows his eyes a little. “What about your girlfriend?” he asks.

Carl frowns. “What about her?”

Eddie smirks, knows that Carl doesn’t really get it.

He presses forwards into Carl’s space, flattens him against the wall and hears the breath hitch in his chest. He’s not scared though, when Eddie looks down. He just seems curious. His head cocks again.

Eddie wants to kiss him. He doesn’t.

“What about your girlfriend?” he asks again.

He can feel Carl’s dick twitch against his leg where they’re pressed together. It makes him smile, makes his belly flip over in something akin to a victory dance.

“She ain’t the boss of me,” Carl says simply. That’s all Eddie needed to hear.

“Good,” he says, stepping back. Carl actually looks disappointed. “So… beer?”


	2. Then

Carl makes a gorgeous sound when Eddie finally presses forwards and kisses him.

It’s been three weeks and ten date-not-dates later. Eddie’s been good, he’s been so good. He’s not great at waiting forever though.

So he just goes for it.

He flattens Carl up against the wall of his bedroom and curls his tongue into Carl’s mouth. Maybe it’s instinct, but Carl’s hand flies up to the back of Eddie’s neck. He grips tight, reels him in further and kisses back.

It’s glorious.

And then Carl pushes him back a little, a small frown creasing between his eyebrows. “I think I need a little time,” he says slowly, eyes meeting Eddie’s dead on. He’s still not scared, just a little confused. Eddie can respect that. “Just to work things out.”

He nods. “Okay,” he says. “Come find me.”

And he leaves.

 

*****

He doesn’t know what Carl did to work things out, but it’s barely been two days when he turns up in Eddie’s room at his Aunt’s house.

He just lets himself in, finds Eddie sprawled on his back on his tiny bed. Eddie pauses playing with the switchblade in his hands, stares. He’d thought he’d have to wait longer.

He tells Carl as much.

“Shut up,” Carl says and climbs over him until he’s straddling Eddie on the bed.

Eddie doesn’t know if his rickety piece of shit bed can take this, can handle them, but he’s willing to find out.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Carl admits, bending until their lips are barely an inch apart. Eddie can taste his words, and peppermint. “But I want to.”

And then he kisses him and Eddie’s whole world is bursting apart at the seams. Carl kisses just like he is, violent and a little crazy, but with a slight softer edge underneath it all. He keeps peeking at Eddie through his eyelashes and it makes Eddie smile as he arches upwards.

His cocks been hard since Carl walked into the room and he grinds it  against Carl’s ass, fingers the ridges of his spine through Carl’s thin t-shirt.

Carl moans and Eddie swallows it. Carl’s knees are digging into his hipbones, he’s gripping so tight, squeezing like he needs to ground himself somehow.

Eddie can understand that feeling because it feels like his head is swimming. He feels like he’s in the clouds, like this is an out of body experience. He moans and he fucks into Carl’s mouth with his tongue and _this is real,_ he tells himself over and over again. Like a mantra.

His fingers are sure and precise when he undoes Carl’s belt, slides his zipper down. Carl takes a deep breath, sits up and stares down at him with eyes blown completely wide. He looks fascinated, he looks hot as hell.

He doesn’t ask what Eddie’s doing, because it’s pretty obvious when Eddie pushes his hands behind Carl’s ass and guides him up his body.

Carl kneels either side of his head, sits on Eddie’s chest and with a confidence Eddie didn’t think he would have at once, rubs the fat head of his cock against Eddie’s lips.

He moans, darts his tongue out to taste and can’t take his eyes off of Carl’s face.

Carl rips his shirt over his head, throws it somewhere neither of them will remember when they’re done. “I’m not your fragile fucking girlfriend,” he says, grip hard on Carl’s jean-clad ass.

Carl laughs and he’s still laughing as he shoves his cock down Eddie’s throat.

It’s a sort of wonderful that Eddie doesn’t know how to explain. Carl’s hips are pressing down into his face, rhythm fast and unapologetic. He doesn’t stop to ask if Eddie can take it, he just knows he can.

He hunches over Eddie’s head, hands on the wooden back of his headboard. He’s knocking it into the wall and Eddie couldn’t care in the slightest.

Eddie moans, opening his throat and swallowing around Carl’s length like this was what he was born for. Maybe it was. He lets his teeth graze against the head just slightly as Carl pulls back. Carl fucking _howls_ with it, fucking back in sharply.

There are tears pricking at the corners of Eddie’s eyes and spit is running down the sides of his face. He doesn’t care in the slightest though. Not when all he can taste and feel and smell is Carl.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Carl growls out and his whole body snaps taught when Eddie dips into the back of his jeans to rub a dry finger just barely across his hole.

Carl comes down his throat in one long wave, no warning and no apology. Eddie just swallows what he’s given and laughs with a hoarse throat as Carl crawls his way back down Eddie’s body. He sags almost completely on top of him, grinning into his face.

“Damn, you’re hot,” Carl says when he sees Eddie’s spit slick face.

He kisses him, pushed a hand down into Eddie’s boxers with no hesitation at all. He thinks that’s Carl all over. He doesn’t worry, doesn’t really think about it, he just _does_. And Eddie loves it.

He doesn’t take long, letting Carl kiss him and just revelling in the feel of a dry hand around his cock.

“You got a fuckin’ snake in there, Jesus?” Carl asks, laughing into Eddie’s mouth as he jerks him.

Eddie grins, can’t help it. “Well you know what they say.”

It comes out as more of a gasp as his cock jerks. He comes all over the inside of his boxers and Carl’s hand.

Carl pulls it out, squints at it for a second and if he could, Eddie would have come all over again at the sight of Carl’s tongue flicking out to taste his fingers. He scrunches his face up a little and then shrugs, “Different.”

 _Where the hell did this boy come from?_ Eddie can’t help but think. He still doesn’t know, even though he’s been watching Carl for so long.

Carl wipes the rest of it off onto Eddie’s bed sheets, but he isn’t offended.

“Least I know where the gay wieners go now,” Carl says, settling himself down under Eddie’s arm.

Eddie doesn’t really get what he’s talking about, but he laughs anyway. How could he not?


	3. Still Then

Carl didn’t see this coming, but he thinks that’s why he likes this so much.

He likes Eddie, from the moment he first saw him. There’s something a little _off_ in his eyes, sure, but Carl likes the unpredictability of that.

And fuck if the guy doesn’t suck cock like a pro.

There’s something about lying squished together on one of their beds that’s so appealing. He likes it when Eddie’s arm curls around him, rests heavy over his waist or possessively on his throat. He likes it, likes how safe it makes him feel.

It’s like all of a sudden Carl really knows where he is. He doesn’t know how he didn’t realise it before.

And it’s not the gay thing. He still like chicks, still jerks off to straight porn. He thinks it’s just an Eddie thing.

Fiona doesn’t trust him, but she doesn’t trust anyone really. He can see why Ian and her fell out. He can feel that same judgement in her stare. At least this time around, she’s learnt to keep her mouth shut.

He lies beside him now, fingers tracing over the edge of his jaw. He’s not pretty, not like a girl. There’s no softness to him. Eddie is all hard edges, abs firm underneath Carl’s hand, thighs dark with hair. Still, he’s attractive. Less so when he’s asleep, but when he’s awake and Carl can get the edge of his mouth to lift in that slight smile, he’s gorgeous.

After sex, he’s hot.

Carl likes him more than he ever has any girl, he realises. But again, that isn’t the guy thing, it’s just an Eddie thing.

“What’re you watching me for?” Eddie asks when he wakes up and meets Carl’s eyes.

Eddie seems to alternate between dozing in snatches and then, like it all catches up to him, he’s passed out like the dead. Impossible to wake.

Right now, he’s in the first stage.

Carl shrugs. “Because I can,” he says simply. There’s nothing more to it.

“Okay,” Eddie says.

“Would you ever hurt me?” Carl asks in passing, tracing a line down Eddie’s chest. He thinks he knows the answer, but he just wants to hear it. He wants to ask it once and then he can tell the rest, can tell Fiona and Lip and whoever else to go fuck themselves.

Eddie’s eyes are sharp when they meet Carl’s. There’s a fire inside of him and it’s probably going to swallow them both whole one day, but Carl isn’t scared of that. He’s happy to just enjoy the ride. “No,” he says, firm.

He sounds angry, but Carl shushes him, kisses him to get that expression to melt.

“I wouldn’t hurt you either, you know,” he says, because he thinks that’s the bit that people always forget. Just because Eddie looks dangerous – _is_ dangerous – doesn’t mean he’s invincible.

Eddie relaxes slightly against him, like he’s been wanting to hear that but didn’t know how to ask. “Okay,” he says, complete belief, just like that.

Carl grins. “So let’s talk about when we’re going to fuck.”

 

*****

 

When they do fuck, it’s with Carl plastered over Eddie’s back, counting his ribs as he tries to breathe because _holy fuck that’s tight_.

Eddie just laughs underneath him pressing back and Carl is legitimately seeing stars. Why the hell has he not been doing this forever? He doesn’t have a fucking clue.

He bites weakly at Eddie’s shoulder and then straightens up. He grabs a hold of Eddie’s hips and fucks these gorgeous, punched out little sounds of him. It’s awesome, it’s the best thing he could possibly be doing with his time.

He can see why Ian’s so addicted to Mickey.

Eddie keeps gasping underneath him, rolling his hips backwards, fucking himself on Carl’s cock. He thinks he’d like to watch Eddie ride him some time. He loves when girls do it, but he thinks there’s gotta be something about the image of Eddie’s large body looming over him, all muscles and dark skin.

Would he bite his lip? Would he do it slow or fast?

Carl can’t wait to find out.

“You should do me next,” he says, fingering Eddie’s hole when they’re done. A part of him can’t believe he fit in there, he’s still kind of stunned at the whole experience.

He kisses Eddie’s chest, feels his laugh rumble underneath his lips.

“Okay,” Eddie says and Carl grins.

 

*****

 

When Eddie finally gets the chance to fuck _him_ , Carl isn’t really sure which experience he likes the better.

The best part – they get to try over and over and over again to see if he can work it out.

 

*****

 

“Break up with her,” Eddie says, mouth skirting along Carl’s. “Please.”

“Or what?” Carl asks, breathless.

“Or I’ll just break her.”

Carl laughs, but they both know he’s serious. That’s what makes Carl’s humour so wonderful. “Okay,” he says. “Now, you gonna suck my dick, or what?”

That’s there beginning; it’s pretty much a crazy ride from there. Like that line in the film Debbie made Carl watch who made Eddie stay because he wasn’t suffering alone.

They were on a rollercoaster that only went up. (But in that case, that was just because they were building up for one hell of a drop.)


	4. Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a little to the previous chapter. And pay attention to the chapter titles for timeline.

“Ian?” he hisses into the phone, voice scared and high. Nervous.

“Carl?”

He sounds sleepy. _Fuck_. He hadn’t realised it was the middle of the night.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry… I need your help.”

 _They’re so fucked_.


	5. Four Years From Now

He feels like an idiot standing there with nothing in his pockets but air, a used tissue and some loose change, a carton of milk in one hand and not even a phone. It was almost three in the morning and he’d only run out for milk, because he knew if he woke up in the morning and there was none, it would fuck up his mood for the rest of the day.

He supposes it didn’t really matter too much now though actually.

He thinks it’s ridiculous how desensitised he felt by the situation in front of him. He saw the guy with his grubby hair and his bloodshot eyes, saw the slight shake in his hand on the gun and the determination set into the lines of his face and maybe he should have been scared, maybe he should have felt something, _anything._

Except… Carl was dating scarier.

All he could think about was how Eddie’s hand never shook on the gun and how his eyes always seemed so bright, so alive as he stared down the person in front of him. Already caught up in the rush he felt after the kill. All he could think of was Eddie and how the blood looked on his fingers when he looked up at Carl with an expression that was supposed to be sheepish maybe, but eyes so stupidly and ridiculously bright that it was obvious he wasn’t sorry for a thing.

All he could picture was Eddie and what he looked like hunched over a kill and he knew maybe, probably, this was where he should be scared. But how could he be scared of Eddie? The one thing that would never hurt him, _ever_?

“I said, _empty your fuckin’ pockets_ ,” the guy barks at him, just a kid really, late teens, early twenties.

He was dirty, too thin, a nervous junkie. His eyes were flitting over his shoulder to the mouth of the alley when they both knew nobody walking by at this hour was going to give a shit about what was happening. They wouldn’t care about a mugging, a murder or anything but where their next drink or hit was at.

Which is probably all the more reason why Carl should have been at least _worried_ about what was playing out in front of him.

He tilts his head to the side as he regards the guy, looking at all the things he was doing wrong.

The way he was standing wrong, the way he couldn’t even look at Carl for more than a fleeting second. The way he looks away at the opposite end of the alley at just the wrong time. Because it was open both ends and Carl’s face turns in the opposite direction, towards the wet slap of feet on the puddled ground.

Which was why he doesn’t miss what happens next.

There’s a crunch of body hitting brickwork and a scuffle of feet, a clatter as the gun crashes to the ground and a scraping noise as it’s kicked off to the side. Then there’s nothing but the noises of the city around him and the wet sound of something puncturing flesh over and over again.

Eddie’s arm is almost blurring as he jams the knife into the guy’s gut over and over again, shoulder pinning him to the wall. His eyes are frantic, lips twisted into a cruel grimace as he threw his entire body weight and energy into it. “You don’t touch him,” he hisses at Carl’s would-be-mugger as he drags his blade across the guy’s throat and Eddie wonders if he’s supposed to have heard what with how softly it was spoken.

He can’t help but let it make him smile though as he listened to the guy gurgle out his final breaths, his eyes lock on the tense lines of Eddie’s back through his dark t-shirt as he steps back just enough to let the guy crumple to the ground. Carl lets his eyes slide away from Eddie to the puddle of blood running dark across the ground towards Eddie’s feet.

“You’re gonna fuck up your shoes,” he says, the words bursting off his tongue before he could even think to register that, _yes, he was actually speaking_.

He’s wondered in the past if maybe there isn’t something broken in him for how little this was having any affect. Maybe he’s just immune now.

He’s watching someone else’s blood, someone who was practically a kid’s blood run out across the wet ground, but all he could think about what Carl ruining his shoes. He knows that’s fucked up. He doesn’t really care.

Eddie turns towards him, grin stretching his mouth and his white teeth flashing in the gloom. There’s blood lining his face in an arch, like paint-splatters and Eddie watches Eddie’s dark eyes blink at him through his stained lenses. He wonders just how often Eddie has had to clean blood off of the glass, out of his hair where it was streaked now through the front, dripping off to land spots onto his t-shirt.

He remembers the first time he spotted those glasses on Eddie’s face. He’d tossed the book Eddie was reading aside and sucked him off, the whole time staring at those glasses.

Eddie’s fingers are stained red again, the hilt of his knife swinging loosely between them now just like those nights they’d spent sitting on that shitty park, a switchblade flicking in Eddie’s hands.

He could remember when they’d slit their palms with that switchblade and clasped their hands together. _“Like blood brothers,”_ Carl had said, a little drunk and a little high, the pain singing through his veins and his palm already throbbing where it was pressed tight against Eddie’s.

There was a line of blood trickling down his wrist and he was oddly fascinated by the fact that he didn’t know who’s it actually was, his or Carl’s? He’d laughed though and said, “ _Well, brothers who fuck.”_

 _“Soul mates,”_ Eddie had told him, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger, dark eyes shining. It hadn’t seemed scary when he’d said it and Carl still can’t work out why.

It should have been.

Now Eddie shrugs at Carl’s comment, still grinning, but Carl notices that he took a careful step sideways and closer to him to avoid the growing puddle of blood. He doesn’t ask if Carl is okay, didn’t treat him like he was some delicate flower; but then he never had done, not since this had started. Carl probably would have been pissed if he had even tried.

“Shouldn’t we already be walkin’ away from this?” he asks, fingers shifting on the handle of his milk carton, watching Eddie carefully as he took three more steps closer to put himself right by Carl’s side.

Their shoulders brushed as Eddie tips his head back to stare up at the sky for a brief moment. “It’s going to rain any minute,” he says, casually, like that was the only explanation that Carl was going to need.

Hell, maybe it was.

Carl kisses him quick, because he wants to. There’s blood on his tongue and he can feel Eddie’s fingers wet against his jaw. He doesn’t care.

They leave the body crumpled there against the wall in that alley, moving back the way that Carl had come so that they could slip around through the darker, narrower streets and alleyways. He doesn’t even question that their feet were following the automatic path to Eddie’s apartment and not the Gallagher house.

If he’s honest, he hasn’t been staying there in years, but he still hasn’t quite made the concrete move.

Eddie’s apartment was only two streets over, but the people were rougher, less caring about anything strange they might see. Those that would be curious were drugged up out of their mind and nothing they said was ever going to be believable. It wasn’t going to hold up in court.

Their shoulders bump occasionally as they walked, enough for it Eddie to reach down and tangle their fingers together instead. His grip is bruising.

“Here,” Carl says, shrugging out of his jumper when Eddie wipes his glasses off on his shirt. He leaves bloody, obvious smears on the fabric.

Eddie pulls it over his head without question, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose again after it had settled in place. It’s a little short and he stretches wider than it was made to across his broader shoulders. He still looks hot.

Sure enough the heaven’s open not even a minute after they’ve started walking, the blood dripping out of Eddie’s hair and the hairs rising on Carl’s arms in response to the cold.

Getting ill was better than jail though, or at least was better than some awkward questions.

“So you stalkin’ me, or what?” he asks, looking sideways at Eddie and squinting through the rain.

The only other occasional people they pass are just fuzzy outlines to him through the rain and it couldn’t have been any more perfect than if they’d planned it to be this way.

As soon as he says it, he remembers asking Eddie the exact same thing before they started this whole thing. His answer is the same now and it was then. “Maybe I am.”

Eddie’s smirk is sharp, the curve of his eyebrows as they rose coming across dangerous in a way that probably would have terrified anyone else.

“Was checkin’ out a tip someone gave me,” he shrugs then and shakes rainwater out of his hair in a way that came across so much like an involuntary twitch that it made Carl want to smirk, “Guess it just makes you a lucky fuckin’ duckling.”

Carl didn’t know if that was him telling the truth, didn’t really care too much if he was being honest. He just let one corner of his mouth tug up into something that was far too sardonic to be a smile, but it wasn’t quite a smirk either.

“Guess I must be,” he replies, spitting out water that ran into his mouth as he tips his head back for a brief moment.

He’d used to lie outside sometimes with his eyes and mouth wide open in the rain, but he’d never quite been able to work out if he was trying to discover if he could drown that way or if he could wash out all the images he didn’t want burned into the back of his eyelids. He’d seen Eddie do exactly the same thing before.

Maybe they were soulmates after all.

 “You better have fuckin’ Coco Pops,” he says as Eddie puts his key in the outer door and held it open with his foot for him. He swung the milk into Eddie’s thigh as he spoke, pushing past him and already starting to jog up the stairway. “And not the shit kind either, I mean the real fuckin’ deal.”

Neither of them cared for the amount of noise they were making as they ran up the four flights to Eddie’s apartment. The wet slapping sound of their shoes on the steps echoed around them, bouncing off of the shitty, graffiti covered walls.

Eddie rolls his eyes, jamming his foot into the bottom of his door to get it open, knocking flakes of green paint loose. The air is stuffy inside the bare apartment, but warm and Carl can already feel the shaking start to fade from his hands as he moves over to put the milk in the ugly blue fridge.

“You know I do, you ate them this morning” Eddie says. Neither of them know why Carl still likes to pretend he doesn’t live here.

He has his own key and everything. Has done for years.

Eddie was already stripping off clothes, leaving them on the floor in a wet mess, the muscles in his back working and his tattoos shifting. He walks over to the tiny bedroom in which the walls touched the mattress on the floor on three sides out of four. He tosses Carl’s jumper over the back of a chair before he disappears, the door left open like it always was.

Carl pulled his own shirt off, dropping it on top of the pile of Eddie’s soaked clothes along with his jeans and fell face first onto the mattress beside his boyfriend.

 And so what if they fought like five-year-olds for ten minutes or so over who got the decent pillow and who got the thin, shitty one; it wasn’t like anyone was there to judge them for it.


	6. Five Years From Now (Still)

Carl still like watching Eddie sleep. There’s something therapeutic in it.

Right now he’s dead to the world, huffing out these short little breaths. Carl presses a kiss against Eddie’s temple, can’t help but smile at the little snuffle the other man makes.

He kisses Eddie’s shoulder, looks up at the photos on the bedroom wall.

There’s on of he and Eddie, flipping off the camera but laughing. If you look close enough, you can see the blood on Eddie’s knuckles, on Carl’s collar.

Another is Lip and Amanda on their wedding day.

Ian and Mickey with Fiona glaring in the background, unaware she’s been captured in time doing exactly what she promised she would stop.

The rest are all newspaper clippings of arrests or grainy camera shots. They all have a red ‘X’ scrawled through their faces. That’s therapeutic in it’s own way. There’s only one left now.

Carl breathes out a long, shaky exhale.

 _At some point, you’re gonna have to be the better man here, Carl_.

That was what Ian had told him.

He’s going to be. He’s going to protect what’s his. He’s going to protect Eddie, because everyone else has failed to and Carl will not be one of those people.

“I love you,” he confesses into the skin of Eddie’s back.

Eddie only grunts and shifts awake when Carl already has three fingers in him. Opening him up slow, he kisses him fully awake and quiet. “Turn over,” he says.

And Eddie does, opening his legs for Carl and pulling him in closer. He pulls Carl into his body, wraps his legs around his waist and kisses him and again and again.

He holds Carl’s face, kisses him soft and then hotter. He bites at Carl’s bottom lips, sucks the sting away and does it all over again. It makes Carl want to laugh for some reason, but the sound that comes out is choked.

His eyes feel wet, so he pushes his face into the crook of Eddie’s neck, tastes the sweat there as he rocks down into Eddie’s body.

He thinks Eddie probably notices, but he doesn’t say anything as Carl chases the horizon of this pleasure. Eddie just cups the back of his head in one of his large hands and moans Carl’s name into the tiny bedroom.

It’s a good enough start to one hell of a day and for just a second, Carl doesn’t completely feel like he’s drowning.


	7. (Still) Five Years From Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly don't actually know how this turned out like this!

He takes a deep breath to stop his hands from shaking as he pulls up against the curb. He’s got the address right, he knows he has. He’s checked it at least ten times and the name is right there on the letter box.

He knows he can do this, knows he’s going to. He just wants to take a deep breath first.

It’s different watching Eddie do it. Different being just the accessory to murder.

But this is him being a man, this is him growing a pair of balls.

He checks his smile in the mirror, makes sure it’s not too creepy. The second pair of clothes are in the backseat. Everything’s ready.

Eddie’s at home, waiting. _Home_. Funny, the first time he’s thought that and they won’t be going back there again. Eddie doesn’t know, he wanted to keep it that way. Made it safer.

He would only have insisted on coming and them only knowing one face is better than two. He’d rather he goes to jail anyway. He could hack juvie, it wasn’t so bad.

Eddie isn’t built to be put in a cage. It’d kill him, slowly and in all the worst ways. It would kill who he was. Carl won’t have that.

So he’s going to be the one.

Besides, it’s about time someone did something for Eddie. He’s been working for himself for so long, worrying about himself. Nobody but Carl worries for Eddie and since that’s true, Carl intends to do it properly.

He’s going to sort this. He’s going to do this.

He gets out the car.

The house is a nice two story, white picket fence job. There’s a ramp on one side of the porch. Carl takes the stairs.

He knocks, flashes the practiced smile at the woman that opens. “Hi, um… is John there, please?” he asks.

_Got to remember your manners!_

She smiles. She’s pretty, not too much older than him with dark  blonde hair and a wide smile. He wonders what she’s seeing, hopes its just some jerk-off in a polo and khakis. He probably looks like a fucking boy scout, hair combed to the side just so; but then, that is the point.

“I’ll get him now,” she says and ducks back into the house.

The man that greets him next is early fifties, in a wheelchair. Carl would recognise the face anywhere though. He smiles sarcastically and unloads a whole gun clip into the bastard’s face.


	8. Now

Ian groans, half at the shrill noise ringing through the room and half at the elbow Mickey lands in his gut.

“It’s yours,” Mickey mumbles, shoving his head underneath his pillow.

He’d say that even if it wasn’t.

“Hello?” he asks, sitting up slightly, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

“Ian?”

“Carl?”

He sounds frantic and it has Ian sitting up properly, shoving Mickey awake. He grunts, opens one eye.

“Sorry,” Carl says. “I’m sorry… _I need your help_.”

“Tell me where you are?”

 

*****

 

When they walk into the warehouse, Mickey lets out a low whistle of surprise. Ian just wants to throw up.

Carl is pacing backwards and forwards, his hands constantly running through his hair and his face twisted into one of panic. He jumps when he sees them, looking so much like he did as a kid when he’d put one of Debbie’s dolls in the microwave.

“Hey,” he says softly.

Ian looks away from his brother’s panicked face, at the pools of blood on the floor. At the body, or at least what’s left of it, lying dead centre. The whole chest has been caved in, the legs a good three feet away from where they should be. The face is unrecognisable, head lolling on the tatters of a neck.

There’s red everything and Ian is seriously going to throw up.

On a crate just behind Carl, Eddie’s sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin. He’s got an axe set at its feet. The blade is still shining wet, but the handles already crusted with Eddie’s over large handprint.

When their eyes meet, he doesn’t look sorry. Eddie doesn’t look much of anything.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t phone the cops,” Ian says, because this isn’t just petty theft or over a couple of drugs. This is full blown murder. This is a one man massacre. “Tell me.”

He’s staring at Eddie. He knows who did this. Carl’s side won’t matter until later.

“You can trust them,” Carl says. He moves over to Eddie, slips a hand behind his neck.

Eddie’s eyes slip closed slightly. He takes a deep breath.

There’s blood all over his face, in his hair.

“He killed my family,” Eddie says, voice dead. It’s chilling. It’s the worst thing that Ian has ever heard. “He came into my house and he hacked up my mother with an axe while his friends tortured my father. Over a couple of grand.”

He scowls at the ruins of the body. Carl shushes him, pets his hair and kisses him temple.

Ian can’t help but think back to when they first met Eddie. _He’s dangerous_ , Mickey had said.

 _Fuck_.

He looks at Mickey now, who’s just looking around them. He doesn’t look ill, just mildly shocked still. Sometimes Ian forgets what Mickey grew up like with his dad. He forgets how hard Mickey can be, how much he can take before he cracks.

Mickey sighs, meets Ian’s eyes. “Take them home,” he says. “Wash the blood off.” He knows Ian better than Ian knows himself. He knows what decision Ian is going to make. “Go,” he says, waving them out the door. “I’ve got this.”

“I love you,” Ian makes sure to tell him as Carl coaxed Eddie off the crate.

Mickey rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah and I’ll see you in jail.” He groans looking at the mess around them. “ _Fucking, Gallaghers.”_

Ian makes himself laugh, but it comes out hysteric. _Fucking, Gallaghers_ , but none of them have ever done anything quite like this before. Only Carl. Only Carl could get himself in this mess.

He watches the way he is with Eddie though, watches the careful way he helps him into the shower when they get home. If it isn’t love then Ian doesn’t know what else it could be.

It’s love for Carl at least anyway. Crazy and unpredictable and dangerous. There to land him in a load of shit.

He just huffs out a breath though and soldiers on. He orders take-out, swigs from a bottle of vodka to stain his breath and takes another swig just to get him through this night. He answers the door and slurs his words, makes sure the delivery man gets a load of Carl and Eddie, cuddling and clean on the couch.

“Thanks, man,” he says, slipping him an extra ten like he doesn’t know how to count.

He leaves the noodles on the counter to go cold. Finds Eddie eating them in the morning, apparently starving.

“At some point you’re going to have to be the better man here, Carl,” he says quietly, when Eddie is passed out. Carl just stares at him with wide eyes, nods, but Ian knows he doesn’t really understand.

Ian knows Carl is going to be the only one that will know how to end this when it inevitably spirals out of control.

He’d seen the look on Eddie’s face when he’d mentioned there being other guys involved. He isn’t going to stop. Carl has to face the facts and make a decision. Ian only hopes it will be the right one.

He bleaches the shower and all of their clothes. He’ll burn them somewhere in the morning, find a way to get rid of that evidence.

When Mickey gets home, everything stinks of bleach and Mickey smells like smoke. He gives Ian a strained, tired smile and loops his arms around his waist. “It’ll be okay,” Mickey tells him.

Ian doesn’t see how it can be.

“Let’s go to bed,” Mickey says and so Ian takes him there and presses his face into Mickey’s chest. He only moves once to throw up into the bucket Mickey has knowingly set on his side.

Other than that he just breathes and cries and wonders how the hell the night came to this. And Mickey pets his hair and shushes him, like Carl is doing with Eddie in the very next room.

_How did it come to this?_


	9. After

“Don’t get mad,” is what Carl says when he answers the phone.

Ian laughs, still chopping vegetables with the hand that isn’t on the receiver. “You know that’s not a good way to start a conversation right?”

Mickey’s lounging on the couch behind him, cat curled up on his chest and eyes glazed as he barely pays attention to the episode of American Pickers that’s playing. He’s just trying to get out of helping, but Ian lets him this time.

“I’m not going to make it to dinner,” Carl says.

“That’s fine,” he replies, not completely surprised. “We can reschedule.”

Carl lets out a shaky breath. He sounds so much like the little kid, standing on the porch, hands clenched into fists as the social workers came to take them away. “No,” he’d said then. “No,” he says now.

Ian stops chopping.

“What did you do?”

He can hear a car engine revving in the background.

“ _Carl!”_

“The less you know the better,” he says. “But I made it right. I did what was right.”

Ian doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.

“Look,” Carl says. The engine revs again, a horn honks. “I’ll call you in a few days. Maybe. Alright?” He pauses and it’s then that Ian knows something is really, _really_ wrong. “You’re the best big brother I could ask for you know.”

He hangs up.

Behind him, Mickey switches channels and the news is broadcasting a police shooting. Someone went to their house, emptied a full chamber into his face. When Ian turns, he recognises the photograph they’re using.

“Fuck,” he shouts, launching the knife across the room.

The cat shoots up out of Mickey’s lap, yowls.

“FUCK!”


	10. Two Hours From After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm going to continue this. I don't know how long for and I'm not really sure what's going to happen. It could be three chapters or it could be fifteen. But a couple of people wanted more so I'm going to try.  
> Thank you so much to everyone that's commented, kudos-ed or read this fic :)

They drive with the windows down, Eddie’s hand drumming a beat onto the outside of the car. The backseat was loaded with duffle bags of their clothes, a few knickknacks.

“You don’t have to do this,” Eddie says, not looking at him.

He’s watching the lines of the road blur past, streetlights reflecting in his dark eyes.

“It’s already done,” Carl says. There was no turning back now. “It’s not just your burden anymore.”

He takes a turning left, carrying them straight out of Illinois. There was a sign reading: _Hope to see you again soon_ in large letters. Carl couldn’t help but scoff, a small pang of regret rising in his stomach.

 _Not likely_ , he thought.

There was no going back now. Only forwards.

“You didn’t have to make it yours,” Eddie says.

When they pull up at a stoplight, Carl twists to look at him. There’s red highlighting the sides of their faces, so familiar and at the same time so alien it makes him want to smile. “I love you,” he says, for the first time.

He doesn’t know why they’ve been holding that back. Maybe because it didn’t really need to be said.

You didn’t cover up a murder for someone you only had a slight crush on.

“It’s you and me,” he says and reaches across the console to tap his fingers lightly on the side of Eddie’s leg.

Eddie smiles, just a slight curve of one side of his mouth. “So what’s the plan?” he asks. His hands fidget for something to do, but he’d thrown his phone out of the moving car window in pieces miles before at ten minute intervals.

Carl shrugs, he just keeps driving. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Do we need to know? Can’t we just make it up as we go along?”

It’s probably more dangerous that way, but Carl doesn’t mind.

“Sure,” Eddie says.

In the glove box there’s a gun with an empty clip and a small stack of photographs. Not the ones with their faces crossed out – Carl burned those on the side of the road on the way to do his deed. No, they’re just meagre pictures of family, of faces Carl probably won’t see again.

There’s a number scrawled on the back of Ian and Mickey’s. He wants to think he can be strong, that he won’t call it, but he knows he will. He knew he would the moment that he placed that call to Ian off the pay-phone.

Sometimes you just needed to hear your big brothers voice though, you know?

“Can we start with a burger?” Eddie asks.

Carl looks at him out of the corner of his eye, fighting a smile. “You going to dip your fries in your milkshake?”

“Obviously.”

“It’s gross…” Carl mutters, but he pulls into the nearest McDonalds Drive-Thru anyway. They don’t stop, Eddie feeding him untainted fries whilst he keeps his foot on the gas. It’s weird maybe, especially since Eddie’s meticulously dunking each fry he has in strawberry milkshake, fingers fiddling with the straw.

Still, a burger isn’t the worst place a story has ever started. It’s not the worst middle either. All Carl knows is that this will not be their end.

They curl up together in a shitty motel room that smells like piss. The kid they pay at the front desk doesn’t even ask for their (fake) IDs and barely looks away from what’s apparently a riveting video game to count their money, let alone memorise their faces.

Eddie wraps his arms tight around Carl’s back and whispers, “Thank you,” into his hair. Carl just nods and teases a finger along the small dip of a space between two of Eddie’s ribs. He wonders if it would be safe if he just nestled in there. He wonders if he could make himself fit.

Eddie’s talk enough that it could probably work.

He kisses Eddie’s rib, the third one up on the left like he’s sealing that plan and gets a kiss on the top of his head for his troubles.

“It’s you and me,” he says, not looking up to see whether or not Eddie’s asleep yet, but he doesn’t think he is. “I’ve got you.”

Eddie just hums.

He knows, he has to know now. He has to know that Carl won’t ever leave him. They’re stuck together, by blood and by bond. _Soulmates._

And if they’re not, if soulmates aren’t actually a thing that exists, then fuck it. They’re the closest to the thing that they need to be.


	11. Three Days From After

He calls Ian in a town that he doesn’t know the name of, his hands shaking against the phone. He’s in a bathroom of another shit motel, the shower running and Eddie asleep in the next room.

“Ian?” he asks, even though he doesn’t know who else it would be.

His brother breathes out a sigh of relief at the sound of his voice.

“Carl,” he says. “Are you okay?”

That’s the thing that Carl has come to appreciate about Ian. He doesn’t bother with the unnecessary statements. He won’t call Carl out on his shit about this, won’t tell him to come home or try to tell him he was stupid.

He knows Carl won’t come back and he knows Carl won’t regret it.

It’s why Carl rang him and not Fiona or Lip or Debbie.

It’s why Carl is ringing him now.

“Yeah,” he says. “Are you?”

Ian laughs and it’s hollow. “Yeah, we’re good I suppose. Lip’s asking me if I’ve seen you.”

“You can’t tell him,” Carl says in a rush. He doesn’t want anyone else to know. Not just because it’s safer that way but because… he knows what they’ll think and he doesn’t want them to.

“I won’t,” Ian promises. Carl knows he’ll keep it. “He may work it out though.”

“I know.”

There’s quiet, just Ian breathing and the sound of the shower running on Carl’s end. It’s probably gone cold by now.

“They don’t have any leads yet,” Ian tells him even though he wasn’t going to ask. “Your sketch doesn’t even really look like you. They got the nose wrong and what… did you dress up like a fucking Eagle Scout or something?”

Carl knows what he’s doing. He’s trying to make light of this situation, trying to normalise it. Probably so one of them doesn’t break down. Carl lets him, he needs it to breathe just  as much as Ian probably does.

“Was going more for Cub Scout,” he confesses.

“Ahh.” Pause. “You going to keep this number?”

He shrugs and then like an idiot, realises Ian can’t see him. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Make sure you keep yours.”

“I will.”

They don’t say anything else for a minute and so Carl caves under the silence. He says, “I need to go.”

And Ian says, “Okay.”

They hang up just like that, nothing else needing to be said. They both know Carl is going to call back.

He stands and strips off his clothes. His shirt is just hitting the grimy tiles when the phone vibrates again. He picks it up and Mickey’s voice growls out at him before he’s even taken a breath. “Listen up, fuck-head,” he says. It’s never occurred to Carl that someone might want to be scared of Mickey. He realises his mistake now. “You don’t tell him where you are, _ever_. You understand me? You’re not landing him in this shit you’re covered yourself in. I find out you’ve fucked this up, I find out you’re putting him in danger and I will come there and kill you myself. Do you understand?”

Carl nods like an idiot, grip white-knuckled on the phone. He squeaks out a small ‘yes’ and feels like a child.

“Good,” Mickey says. “Keep your asses smart.”

He hangs up.

When Carl can make his legs work, he steps into the shower and it has long since gone cold. He stands under it for a long five minutes anyway, until his teeth are chattering in his skull. The he climbs into the bed beside Eddie, skin still wet and presses against the warmth of his body.

Eddie hisses, but gathers him in tight, wrapping the blankets around them both so much that Carl doesn’t have a clue how they’re going to get out.

“Ian okay?” Eddie asks, because he knows. He always knows.

“Yeah,” Carl says. “Mickey too.”

Eddie nods and rests his face on the pillow that’s damp from Carl’s hair. “Good,” he says. “That’s good.”


	12. Three Weeks From After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't posted anything else today. My roommate made me clean by confiscating my laptop charger.....

There’s a girl in a bar and Carl glances twice.

Not for the reasons he knows Eddie thinks he does, although, yeah she does have a nice rack. He thinks that when he sets aside the fact that for a moment he thought it was Fiona. It wasn’t, it just looked like her from the back.

Still, Eddie bares his teeth at the girl when she smiles there way. She scuttles off quickly, hiding behind her friends and Carl rolls his eyes.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he says, hand on Eddie’s knee under the table. “Not here.”

For the first time since he’s known him, Eddie shakes his touch off. He looks at Carl with his eyes angry and impossibly black.

“You don’t want me to do that,” he says, sneering. “Then don’t be with me.”

He gets up and leaves then, storms right out the back door of the bar and leaves Carl with the bill and what makes up a whole beer between two glasses.

Carl drains them both, because _waste not, want not_.

When he follows him out, it’s to find Eddie in a fistfight with a man closer to his size than most. He grunts as he takes a hit, but slams his knee into the man’s gut and gets in another good hit before Carl pulls him back.

He calms and then tenses again under Carl’s hold, shrugs him off.

“What’s going on with you?” Carl asks, following him as he walks back in the direction of their hotel room.

Eddie scoffs, kicks at a stone and lights up a cigarette even though he doesn’t smoke. Carl doesn’t even know where he got the pack. “Nothing,” he grunts and Carl grabs his shoulder.

“Eddie.”

He scowls and can see Eddie start to soften under the weight of it. “You’re stuck with me now,” is apparently what the problem amounts to.

Carl just shrugs, “I wouldn’t call it stuck.”

“I would.”

He rolls his eyes, reaches up to hold Eddie’s face between his hands. “Why?” he asks. “You didn’t make me do shit. I chose this. You. We’re doing this.” He steps back and steals the cigarette, blowing smoke right into Eddie’s face. “You’re stuck with _me_ now.”

Eddie glares at him and then grins. He kisses Carl through the smoke and almost pushes him into a ditch. “I like it that way,” he says. Carl knows he does.

“Shut up then,” he says.

It’s not the only discussion they have on the matter, but it is the only one that ever amounts to more than a single passing comment.

They pull into a small town called Layover in the middle of the night a month after they started driving. It’s quiet, ironic.

So they stay.

They sleep in the car for the first week, moving it occasionally so they don’t attract unnecessary attention. They make a down payment on a shitty apartment above a Chinese fast food place in cash and Carl grins like they’ve won the lottery when he sees the mattress that’s been left behind.

“It’s probably covered in old man ball sweat,” Eddie comments, pulling a face at it.

Carl rolls his eyes and flops down. “You telling me those motels were better?” he asks. “What are you Southside or some fucking princess?”

“Maybe I just don’t want to get crabs.”

Carl tilts his head like a dog, in that way he does and looks at him consideringly. He reaches up and grabs Eddie’s belt loops, pulling him down on top of him with a small _oof_. “Can you get crabs from a mattress?” he asks and the frown on his face shouldn’t be adorable like it is. “Do they actually look like crabs?”

Eddie laughs and kisses him quiet, licking into his mouth to chase the taste of home.


	13. One Month From After

Carl is sitting cross-legged on the mattress, half watching Eddie do press-ups and half circling possible job opportunities in the newspaper spread across his lap.

“What about… janitor?”

Eddie levels him with a look. “No.”

Carl makes an affronted noise. “Why not? It pays pretty good.”

Eddie kicks his feet up so he’s upside down against the wall, slowly lowering himself until his nose touches the floor and then back up again. If Carl tried to do that… well there’s a reason Carl doesn’t try to do that, okay. “Nobody ever trusts the janitor,” Eddie says, like the blood isn’t all rushing to his head.

That’s fine though since all the blood is currently leaving Carl’s.

“That’s bullshit,” he says.

Eddie scoffs and Carl watches him do another set before he rights himself. “Did _you_ ever trust our school janitor?”

“No… but Jenkins looks like a fucking serial… I see your point.”

He can’t believe he’s blushing, the heat rising to his face and making everything go bright red. Even his ears are feeling fucking hot. But then… that might have something more to do with the way Eddie’s moving towards him.

He bends, presses a kiss to the top of Carl’s head and snatches the newspaper away.

Without his glasses on, he has to squint at the page and it’s like watching an old man trapped in one hell of a young man’s body for a moment. “Ain’t nobody gonna trust you in a day care,” he comments and puts a big red line through that particular advertisement. “What about this one?”

He hands Carl the paper bag, tapping a small one down the bottom.

“You want me to be a waiter?” he asks, eyebrow raised.

“Why not?” Eddie asks, turning back from where he’s filling their bathroom doorway. Which is convenient, since the bathroom doesn’t actually come included with a _door_ to go in said doorway. “I think you’d look cute in a little bowtie.”

Carl pulls a face. “You’re fucking serious, aren’t you?”

Eddie shrugs and pushes his shorts down until they pool around his ankles on the bare floor. “Its low key, you’d get to know people. Waiters are friendly and nobody ever remembers their names anyway.”

It probably isn’t the worst idea he’s ever had, so Carl draws a large red circle around the advertisement. “Shall I call now then you think?” he asks.

“Or you could come and let me fuck that ass of yours in the shower,” Eddie says. Carl’s on his feet so fast it makes his head spin and Eddie laugh at him. “It’s not even eight yet, I doubt anyone’ll answer.”

Carl saunters over to him in a way he thinks is sexy but probably just comes across as awkward as fuck. He goes up on his toes and bites at Eddie’s earlobe, laughs when Eddie flattens him against the door jam.

“Why are we awake before eight again?” he asks.

They both know the answer, it’s the nerves. They keep them awake.

Eddie smirks, slow and sexy as fuck. It makes Carl want to kiss him, but when he leans in, Eddie’s grip on his jaw has him stopping just short. “I can think of a few reasons,” Eddie says and then ducks in to devour his mouth.

He shoves Carl’s clothes down and off, ripping his shirt over his head before he picks Carl up by the back of the thighs. “What happened to the shower?” Carl asks, half of his words getting swallowed up by their kiss.

“I’m saving water,” Eddie says, biting Carl’s bottom lip and then soothing away the sting. “No point getting you clean if I’m just gonna get us all sticky again.”

Carl laughs, pulls a face and a runs his hands across Eddie’s shoulders. He’s holding Carl up like this is no effort at all and hell, it probably isn’t.

This isn’t the first time they’d fucked since what happened, but it’s the first time that feels like it really means something. There’s wood biting into Carl’s shoulder blades, splinters digging underneath his skin as Eddie fucks up into his ass roughly.

He gasps like a fucking chick, head banging back against the wood, legs clinging desperately to Eddie’s waist. He has a hand on the back of Eddie’s neck, clutching him against the hollow of his throat where Eddie seems set on making a permanent mark.

Carl’s seen the scar tissue at the base of Ian’s throat, layer upon layer of Mickey’s teeth making their impact. It would be hot if it wasn’t on Ian, but Carl still doesn’t think he quite wants that sort of thing marring his own body permanently. He’d rather just get a tattoo or some shit. Takes less time and would probably be a hell of a lot less painful.

Still, he arches up into Eddie’s mouth, clutching him close and making these pathetic little whining sounds as Eddie’s hips drive against his ass.

He rests his chin on the top of Eddie’s head can smell sweat and Chinese food and he knows he’s never going to be able to eat noodles again without getting a hard-on.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says. “Come on.”

Eddie laughs and lifts his face to kiss him, tongue sliding over his and curling against the backs of his teeth in time to the rock of his hips. The pace is furious, driving him further and further up the inside of the door and Carl’s pretty sure he’s losing a significant amount of skin here, but he doesn’t care.

He comes first, orgasm creeping up on him like a surprise and is entire brain whiting out for a long, wonderful minute. He falls forwards against Eddie who doesn’t so much as grunt and doesn’t slow his own pace for even a second. He just mouths at Carl’s shoulder and grips his lower back tight as Carl attaches his teeth to Eddie’s earlobe again.

He doesn’t know what it is exactly that tips Eddie over the edge, but he groans loud enough that everybody downstairs must be able to hear them. His knees buckle slightly, hand slamming against the bathroom wall beside Carl’s shoulder to catch himself.

That’s the thing that Carl thinks he loves about Eddie. He loves that in every moment, in any moment, Eddie can still be relied upon to catch them. He can take the world on his shoulders and not so much as grunt. He can handle it all.

Carl both respects the hell out of that and finds it hot as fuck.

It’s a good thing that Eddie is already all his.

“Shower,” he whispers, not in the slightest bit inclined to put his feet back on solid ground. He’d rather Eddie carry him and he does, stepping into the small shower stall that hardly fits one of them and turning the freezing spray over their heads.

Carl gasps, eyes flying open where he’s pretty sure he was dozing off on Eddie’s shoulder.

Eddie’s laugh is wonderful and Carl blinks at him through the water, watches the droplets run down over his face. He presses a thumb to Eddie’s bottom lip and can’t help but smile at him. “You’re amazing,” he says and he doesn’t mean the sex. He doesn’t mean the killing even.

He just means Eddie. Always Eddie. Only Eddie.

Eddie who just shrugs, bashful like he can’t understand what Carl is saying. He probably does, the man never gets complimented enough and if Carl had the vocabulary, he’d fix that problem.


	14. One Month and One Week From After

He goes into the interview and he gets the job from a stout man with a total of about three hairs on his head.

Eddie doesn’t look surprised when he tells him, but Carl feels it.

He doesn’t have to wear a bowtie, the ironically named _Chicagos_ isn’t that sort of place. It mainly deals with comfort food and Carl serves it to people who smile at him with a sort of small-town kindness he’s never been accustomed to.

Layover doesn’t get many new people it seems, because they all coo over his accent and he tries to act bashful and nice, tries to smile sweetly and he finds it isn’t even all that hard.

He wears his red t-shirt and takes the orders of people who gossip about others and then the order of those they’re gossiping about. Everyone likes to introduce themselves by name even though he’s only their server and he doesn’t remembers them, but he thinks Eddie was wrong about this being an anonymous job. They all seem to remember him.

Still, it feels safe here in a way Chicago never really did.

Eddie comes in after he’s been working there two weeks. He nods at Carl from across the room, gets waved into a booth by a waitress with dyed red hair called Lindsay. Carl only remembers her name because she lets him bum cigarettes on their breaks.

Eddie, he realises quite suddenly, is probably one of three black people in the entire town; but they don’t seem adverse to it.

It’s always the vibe that Eddie gives off that has people stalling. “That is one tall ass man,” Lindsay comments to him when they’re both at the window looking through to the kitchen pinning up their orders.

Carl smirks and glances over at Eddie again, who’s watching him with that single-minded and penetrating gaze makes most people feel uncomfortable. “That he is,” he replies and then says, “I’ll take him,” even though it isn’t his table that Eddie’s sitting at.

She looks surprised, but doesn’t complain as Carl weaves his way towards his boyfriend.

“I got a job,” is the greeting Eddie has for him.

“Oh?”

He nods, drums his fingers on the shining pale green of the table. The colour scheme in here is atrocious, it really is, but Carl supposes you get used to it after a while.

“As a janitor,” Eddie says and if Carl didn’t know his tells, he’d think he was serious.

“Don’t be a dick,” he says, snorting out a short laugh. “What is it really?”

Eddie chuckles, “The computer store down the road was hiring.” Eddie was good with computers. “Had me fix a bug on one of their systems and apparently that’s all it took.”

He grins and says, “Good.” He takes Eddie’s menu off him. “You staying or you just came to tell me that?”

“How’s the pie here?”

Carl grins, “Guess you’re about to find out.”

He can feel Eddie’s eyes on him as he walks away. It’s a comforting weight that brings that small extra spring in his step. Like he’s in some fucking soap opera show now or something, the whole thing feels cheesy as hell. Not that he cares.

“Everything okay?” Lindsay asks, filling a drink order beside him.

He nods. “’Course,” he says. “And hey, what’s the policy on like, family discounts and stuff.”

Lindsay’s eyebrow creeps up slightly, but she seems to think it’s a pretty standard question when she replies, “Just don’t go mad. You’re allowed fifteen per cent and anything left at the end of the day is fair game.”

He already knew that last part. It’s how he and Eddie have been eating since Carl’s started work. It reminds him a lot of when Fiona used to bring leftovers home from the diner she worked at once. They’d been subjected to the oddest combinations of food that way.

“Okay,” he says, getting Eddie a coffee he didn’t have to ask for.

He drops in a couple of ice cubes and takes it over. “When’d you start?” he asks, barely resisting the urge to reach out and touch Eddie. It’s an impulse he doesn’t realise he gives into so often until he gets to the point he has to suppress it.

“Day after tomorrow,” Eddie replies. “You get your pay check tonight right?”

Carl nods.

“Want me to see if I can find some stuff for the apartment on the cheap?” Eddie asks. He looks nervous, like maybe he’s not sure Carl would be fine with that.

It is technically Carl’s money after all, Carl that’s worked for it. He can tell Eddie’s not quite sure of the place here, even though they’ve been basically living together for years.

“’Course,” Carl says. “What’s mine is yours and all that shit, right?”

“We married now?” Eddie asks as Carl’s already backing away. There’s a hot look in Eddie’s eyes as he watches him that Carl can feel lodging in some deep down part of him. It’s not quite happiness, or anything like that, but he looks pleased.

Like Carl has said something he wasn’t aware he wanted to hear.

“Maybe,” Carl says, winking. He has to smother his laugh as he turns to the next table, hardly aware of what their answer even if when he asks them if there’s anything they need.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” Lindsay says after Carl gives Eddie his pie and after about the twelvth look that the pair have shared. Carl keeps looking over from whatever he’s doing to find Eddie still staring at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carl says, which is only half true.

She levels him with a look. “So you haven’t been all gooey eyed over Mr Tall, Dark and Scary over there?” she asks. “You should go ask him out, God knows he hasn’t taken is eyes off you since he came in here.”

Carl laughs, watches the way the sound has Eddie’s lips curling into a smile. “I did that years ago,” he says and leaves her standing there, spluttering behind him.


	15. Two Months From After

He’s asleep when Eddie comes in, curled into the part of the mattress that hadn’t been warm in hours.

Carl didn’t let himself think too much of it when Eddie had slipped out from underneath the covers. He’d just curled around his pillow a little tighter as the draft from the open window had swept across his skin.

The days have been feeling longer, melting into slow weeks that Carl actually finds himself enjoying. The diner is the same people coming in day after day, which Carl likes in a way he didn’t think he ever would.

It’s nice to be greeted by name, to have little old ladies ask after Eddie and question if he’s getting enough to eat. It’s a sort of care for other human beings that cities don’t have. It’s not something Carl had ever thought before he’d like and maybe it was still strange enough that it was okay to.

Or maybe it was just because he felt safe here under the careful scrutiny of the town. He knew they were watching, so he knew how to play it.

It was all easy enough like that.

He still called Ian in the dead of night sometimes.

_“I’m scared of getting used to this,” he confesses, watching the drip of rain outside the tiny bathroom window._

_It always baffled him how the rain could be coming down so hard outside, but just single drops trickled down the glass. It was an anomaly he didn’t want explained, even if it would only turn out to be simple logic. He liked the idea that even falling from something as vast as a cloud, something could still carve its own path._

_“Don’t be,” Ian says._

_Carl had listened to the timbre of his brother’s voice and he’d relaxed like he hadn’t in days. He’d taken the much needed breath._

_Sometimes he thought it was almost ironic, how he and Ian had never been the closest until everything with Carl started taking drastic U-turns. Eddie had been the spanner in the works that had pulled them closer together._

_Sure, it was through murder and lies and enough secrets to fill the pages of a novel, but at the same time it felt right. At the same time he was glad of it._

_“It’s a fresh start, Carl,” Ian tells him. “You don’t have to worry about who you were. Just worry about who you’re going to be.”_

_It made sense in a way that was sort of beautiful._

_Chicago was for the Carl that burned buildings to the ground and electrocuted the neighbourhood cats for fun. Chicago was for the Carl that belonged there, for the Carl he couldn’t be anymore._

_Chicago was for a Carl he laid to rest and only resurrected down a phone line in the middle of the night._

_This was his reinvention, this was the new him._

_He could be whoever he wanted to be. The psychopath or the waiter? He didn’t think he could be both, but he knew he’d find the compromise soon._

_Maybe the compromise was just Eddie. Eddie was his madness and he needed no more of it. Not in Layover. In Layover Carl could be whoever he made himself. And here he wanted to be great._

_“It’s better for him out of Chicago,” he whispers, watching Eddie through the crack in the door, arm hanging off the mattress, palm braced flat on the wooden floor. His foot is twitching in his dream and Carl wonders: where are you running to? “I know it is. He can’t stop there…”_

_“Too many bad memories,” Ian concedes._

_Carl finds himself nodding even if his brother can’t see him. “He’ll stop here,” he says._

_Eddie wouldn’t ruin this for them. Carl’s not afraid of jail, but he doesn’t want to go. He wants to be here. He wants to be a nobody that everybody notices for reasons that are fine. He doesn’t just want to be the Crazy Gallagher Kid. He doesn’t need to be here._

_Eddie wouldn’t mess that up._

_They’re all dead now, the itch is gone. Isn’t it?_

_In the background he can hear Mickey say something and Ian lets out a long breathe. He doesn’t sound happy, but he doesn’t sound so sad anymore when Carl calls. Maybe there’s been a level of acceptance reached._

_Or maybe it’s something else._

_In his mind’s eye, he can imagine Ian on his bed, Mickey spread-eagled beside him grumbling about losing sleep. He can almost pretend that they’re just two brothers swapping stories across different time zones, voices hushed so as not to wake their boyfriends sleeping beside them._

_He likes that better than the reality of them whispering in the night to guard the secrets that could ruin them all._

_He likes a lot of things better than that reality, but it’s the one they’re living in. And it isn’t so bad. Not when Eddie’s waking, hand reaching across the mattress and eyes meeting Carl’s through the crack in the door._

_“Hi,” he mouths and Carl smiles._

_The bed is calling him._

_“I’ll speak to you later, Carl,” Ian says and they say goodbye like that, with neither of them saying the words really._

_It’s only later Carl will realise that Ian didn’t respond to what he said about Eddie. What he forgets though, is that Ian’s always been the one with the answers. Not giving one should have been the first indicator._

Now he squints through his eyelashes as Eddie steps through the open window, sliding it shut behind him with a careful _snick_.

There’s blood on Eddie’s glasses, on the front of his hoodie.

Carl looks at him for a long second, takes a deep breath and he can taste the salt on the air. He knows what it means. He doesn’t know where Eddie’s been, but he knows enough about what he’s done.

Eddie slips out of his clothes, the sound of shifting fabric the only sound in the room. Carl’s holding his breath and he only lets it out when Eddie’s mouth slides over his.

He doesn’t make a sound, too afraid of what might come out as Eddie slides his fingers back to where Carl is still slick from earlier. He slips inside of him and Carl arches upwards, hands splaying wide over Eddie’s broad back.

He turns his face into the pillow and feels the red from Eddie’s glasses slide onto his own skin. Eddie is mouthing something into his throat and it takes him a minute for him to realise the words are, “I was careful.”

He doesn’t say anything in return, mind still ringing with the emptiness of everything Ian hadn’t said as he remembers. Ian had known Eddie wouldn’t stop.

Carl had known Eddie wouldn’t stop.

So why is he offended? Or maybe it’s just worry. Worry of this being a slip-up. Worry of this being what ends their little harmony they’ve found here.

Or maybe it’s something deeper. Maybe it’s the thoughts of Eddie not fitting here like Carl wants to. Eddie’s never been a good actor. He can’t even act like he isn’t a serial killer, it’s the first thing anyone thinks when they meet him. And they’ve pulled it off so far in this town, nobody seems to think he could _actually do it_.

But if bodies drop, won’t Eddie be the first one they turn to?

Is Carl not enough for him to stop?

He doesn’t want to know the answer to that.

He makes a small wounded noise that he knows Eddie can’t mistake quite for pleasure. Eddie pulls back and looks at him, stops. His expression is confused and Carl knows he doesn’t know what’s wrong. Carl doesn’t react like this. He loves every part of him, especially those which are deadly.

But he wants to keep Eddie more than he wants to fuck him with blood on his face.

“Carl?” Eddie says softly, but he shakes his head.

When he starts to pull back, Carl reels him back in with the hands on his shoulder blades. He arches up and chases the orgasm that can make his world white around the edges and his brain quiet for just a little while.

He comes mouthing at Eddie’s collarbone, his fingers twitching for his phone.

Eddie falls asleep with the blood drying on his face and his hand spread wide across the bottom of Carl’s back. Carl just stays awake. He just stays awake staring at the two lone raindrops winding the same paths down the windowpane, over and over again.


	16. Two Months and one Day from After

Eddie listens to the quiet pad of Carl’s feet against the floorboards.

It’s his day off so he doesn’t move, he just lies there and listens. He’s not surprised when Carl doesn’t wake him like he usually would. No, instead Carl just showers quickly and slips out the door to the diner.

 _Does he think I’m asleep?_ Eddie wonders, but he knows Carl isn’t that stupid. He knows Carl knows him better than that.

They’re both just hiding then. Eddie from the conversation he knows has to come and Carl from Eddie.

He doesn’t know what he’s done wrong, or maybe he does. He thinks he does.

He thinks Carl thought he would stop. Eddie thought he would stop. But it’s like an itch under his skin, driving him mad until he just can’t shake the _want_. He’d put it off and put it off until the need had him sliding out of bed and driving an hour in a random direction in a car he’d ‘borrowed’ from a man down the street.

Mr Nesbitt always leaves his keys under the wheel. Everyone in town seems to know this, but it’s not the sort of town that ever expects thievery.

Eddie put it back still, so it wasn’t necessarily stealing.

He was careful, that’s all that matters. He crept out the window so no one in the shop below could notice him leaving. He took a car that wasn’t his to a large town that he couldn’t remember the name of. He’d purposefully not checked.

He’d slipped the knife into the stomach of a man pushing bad quality weed on a street corner. He wasn’t someone who would be missed, maybe. Eddie didn’t particularly care.

He couldn’t tell you what the guy had looked like, because again, he didn’t care.

It had just been scratching an itch. Like lighting a cigarette, but a little more complicated.

He’d gotten in and then out, the blood on his glasses from the latex gloves as he’d pushed them back up his face. He’d burned and buried the gloves on the side of the road a further half an hour in the wrong direction. Then he’d turned home and snuck back to Carl, like he had used to do in Chicago.

But maybe that was the problem. This wasn’t Chicago anymore.

He scrubs the whole apartment until it’s shining while Carl is at work. By the time he gets home, Eddie is sitting on the mattress with the window wide open, the damp day’s air mingling with the scent of bleach clinging to the room.

Carl just stands there for a long moment and looks at him. Eddie doesn’t think he’s rung his brother yet, which is what Carl usually does nowadays when he wants to get something off his chest.

Eddie doesn’t blame him, but it doesn’t say much for their own communication skills.

He can see Carl weighing his words, can see him chewing them around in his mouth and he just waits, waits for him to inevitably spit them out. Carl’s never been good at waiting long and it’s a quality Eddie loves about him.

It pays off now.

“Do you want this?” Carl asks and the words come sharply, suddenly, like they haven’t been waiting for them.

“What?”

Eddie knows how unintelligent he sounds, but that hadn’t been what he’d been expecting.

“ _This_ ,” Carl says, waving a hand between them, around the apartment, at the window. Eddie imagines at the town in general. “Do you want _this?”_

“Of course I do,” he says.

How could Carl think otherwise?

Carl huffs and drags a hand over his short hair like he’s grasping at the answers in smoke. He doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. “Do you really?” he asks and his hands twitch like he wants to reach for Eddie. It says a lot that he doesn’t. “Tell me if you want, we can… We can go, if that’s what you want. If this isn’t what you want.”

_Why wouldn’t it be?_

Even if it’s shitty, he loves the apartment with Carl. He loves it just the two of them, curled up on a mattress pretending like someone somewhere isn’t chasing them. He loves that he’s got this. That there’s someone in front of him who cares enough to stay.

He loves that Carl loves him enough to offer, but _why wouldn’t he?_

Why wouldn’t Eddie want this? He genuinely doesn’t understand.

“Of course I do,” he says.

Carl scoffs, a rough noise dragged up straight from the back of his throat. “Do you?” he asks. “Because this isn’t how we keep this.” Eddie doesn’t have a clue what he’s trying to gesture to this time. “What you’re doing, I get it okay. _I get it_. You can’t help it sometimes, but they’re dead, Eddie. They’re gone and it’s you and me now.”

He takes a deep breath and his hand it on the doorframe again and Eddie knows he’s going to walk out after his next words come, but it still hurts when it happens.

“You need to choose us. You need to stop.”

Eddie doesn’t know where he’s going and he doesn’t chase Carl down to ask.

_How would he phrase that question?_

He knows that they’re dead. Carl put a bullet in the last man who needed to pay. That debt is done, it’s paid and his revenge is finally in the ground where his parents lie. It’s not that easy to stop though.

It’s not that easy to undo what the revenge made him.

He doesn’t know how to start and he wants to, if it’s the ultimatum.

Kill or be killed is not what it is anymore. It’s not what it ever was really. Maybe it was more kill or go mad, he doesn’t know. Kill or fail.

If it’s kill or lose Carl though, if it ever was, even back at the beginning, he knows which he’d choose. It’s not even a contest. He doesn’t have to think about it.

Does Carl not know that?

He’s going to stop, he will stop. Carl only had to ask. But Eddie just doesn’t know how. He wants to, but he doesn’t have those answers.

Because the killing it like an itch in his fingertips, underneath the skin somewhere he can’t quite reach. It’s always been easier to just scratch it temporarily than learn how to make it not come back.

He’ll cut those fingers off though if he has to. Carl only had to say. He only had to ask.

Yet Eddie still feels like he’s lost something. Maybe it’s just something all men lose though, when the person they love walks out the door.


	17. Two Months and One Day from After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know where this is all going. I just don't quite know how the hell it's getting there. But stick with me and I guess we'll both find out!

The phone rings and Ian doesn’t think before he fishes it out of his pocket.

“Hello?”

Lip’s staring at him from across the room.

 _“You know where he is, don’t you!”_ he’d yelled at him earlier. _“Tell us where he is, Ian! What gives you the right to know and not us!”_

It’s was a right that Lip would want, but Ian wasn’t going to tell him that. He’d just said nothing. He’d just let him yell, because it wasn’t a story that Ian could tell.

He can’t say no, he can’t lie to them quite like that. But he won’t tell them the truth either.

Not even as Debbie’s crying and Lip’s glaring at him like the past few years have built no bridges between them at all.

 _“He doesn’t want to be found,”_ he settles for eventually. _“I don’t know where he is anyway.”_

 _“But you could find out,”_ Lip accuses. _“And since when has Carl known what’s best for Carl?”_

That bit had made Ian laugh, because wasn’t that the reason there had been a rift between the siblings for so long, between Ian and him. Because Lip thought he knew what was best for everyone.

The expression on his face must have said it all, because Lip had scoffed. “ _Not everything’s about you, Ian.”_

 _“Watch it,”_ Mickey had warned, which had only made it worse. Even if it did fill Ian with a warm feeling.

He wasn’t in this alone, he remembered.

 _“I bet he’s told you, hasn’t he!”_ Lip had yelled.

 _“Just shut the fuck up, Gallagher,”_ Mickey had said. He didn’t mind outright lying, but he was kind enough not to completely land Ian in it either. _“Not everything’s about you, remember.”_

“I need to speak to Mickey,” Eddie says now when Ian answers.

Ian jumps guiltily and Lip takes a step towards him.

“It’s for you,” he says, taking a breath and handing the phone across the Mickey.

Mickey who doesn’t even blink, looks composed to the full as he presses the phone to his ear and excuses himself. “Yeah?” is all they hear him say as he ducks out the door.

Lip scowls and takes the extra few steps and Ian has to take another deep breath. He knows this isn’t a conversation he’s going to want to have.

 

*****

“Why are you calling now?” Mickey asks, the afternoon air crisp as it wraps around him. He grinds his foot down against rotting leaves. Fall is always a disgusting season in his opinion. It’s full of everything dying and paving the way for the freezing temperatures that is winter.

On the other end of the line he can hear Eddie shifting around.

Mickey swears to God if this is another, _I’ve killed someone_ call, he’s going to drive to wherever the fuck Eddie is and beat him to death himself. Gallagher would be pissed, but nothing is worth this sort of trouble.

(Ian is, but Mickey doesn’t say that. It’s why he’s let it get this far in the first place!)

“He’s mad at me,” Eddie says after a moment.

It’s funny, how people always ring someone with a point to the conversation, because they have a confession to make, but they still spend a while winding themselves up to actually spitting out the words. Mickey’s a hypocrite, because he does it too, but he finds it annoying. Why can’t you wind up to saying it before hitting ‘Call’ and then spit it out as soon as the other person picks up?

“Why?” he asks, watching his breath fog out in front of him slightly.

“I killed someone.”

Mickey isn’t really surprised and if he’s honest, he doesn’t know why that would make Carl mad. Hasn’t that ship sailed a long time ago?

“Okay,” he says, scratching at the back of his neck.

“Tell me how to stop,” Eddie says and he’s shifting around again. Mickey can imagine him pacing.

There’s a pause as Mickey stares down at the rotting, fall leaves and frowns. He wasn’t expecting that and it’s floored him, honestly. Mickey doesn’t know what the answer for Eddie is. He knows it’s not as simple as to just say stop.

The fact Eddie is asking for some sort of help is evidence enough that he doesn’t have a clue how to help himself. It’s not as cut and dry for him and it never will be. Maybe it would have been different if he hadn’t killed that first guy, if he hadn’t given in to the impulse that way.

Mickey knows he and Carl tell themselves it was all about revenge, but Eddie’s never learnt the stopping point. He’s never had to until now and Mickey doesn’t know what sort of answer he’s looking for.

Mickey’s done a lot of fucked up shit in his life, some of it even Ian doesn’t need to know about. But this, this he has no experience with. He doesn’t know what Eddie wants to hear, doesn’t have the sort of answers he needs.

“Think of it like drugs,” is what he says, because he knows enough about that. “It’s an addiction, right. So you have two options: quit cold turkey or phase it out.”

He doesn’t know which Eddie is going to pick and he honestly doesn’t think he’s going to share. Mickey wants this to be the last of his involvement, but when Gallaghers are involved, he knows it won’t be.

_Fucking Ian and his bullshit family’s drama._

“It can’t be that easy,” Eddie says, because he isn’t stupid.

He’s a lot of things. Twisted, psychotic, crazy, weird, scary, worrying, alright… but he isn’t stupid.

Mickey scoffs. “Of course it isn’t that fucking easy,” he says. “But you wanna keep him around, it’s the decision you’re gonna have to make.”

Eddie sighs down the line and it makes Mickey almost want to ask him where they are, what they’re doing there. He didn’t think it would last thing long, that they’d be able to last on the run like they are.

Maybe he underestimated them though. Or maybe they’re just lucky.

“There been any progress in the case?” Eddie asks, the change of subject both sudden and really not at all. Then again, it depends on whether or not you could really define it as a change in subject.

“Still cold,” Mickey replies, like they’re talking about the weather. “You guys all good?” He has to ask, it’s like an itch in the back of his brain. Maybe it’s caring, or maybe it’s just covering his own ass. He doesn’t really know at this point. “Besides the arguing shit.”

He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it. The smoke gets lost in his breath somewhere, fanning out in front of his face one in the same in the cold air. When he’d stepped out, Mickey had wanted to get the conversation over and done with as quickly as possible, but he’s fine with waiting around for a second longer.

 _Fuck_ , maybe he is starting to care. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen. Not when he’s the one to wrap his arms around Ian at night, press his lips into that red hair and mutter, “It’s alright,” like he doesn’t think he could be lying.

“I got a job,” Eddie says. “Carl… I thought he was happy, but…”

He probably was, as stupid as it sounds. Under the circumstances. Carl’s always been happiest when he’s with Eddie. Lip’s passed comment that it’s when he’s under Eddie’s thumb, but it isn’t that. It isn’t abusive like Lip tries to imply. It’s just co-dependency. And no, it isn’t healthy, but it isn’t that far off from what he and Ian have either.

Mickey recognises the way that Eddie looks at Carl. Like he’d burn the world down for him if he just asked. It’s a powerful feeling, to have that effect on someone. Mickey can see how the both of them might have gone a little mad with it.

“So fix it,” Mickey says in a tone that implies this is the last conversation they’re having on the matter. And it will be, for tonight. He doubts it’ll stick for the future though. “You know Lip thinks it’s a murder-suicide, that you blew your top over something.”

He knows that on the other end of the line, whether the hell he is, Eddie’s tensing. He can practically hear his jaw working, teeth grinding together. It’s predictable and sort of sweet in a fucked up way if you’re willing to squint.

“Lip doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about,” Eddie snarls.

Mickey’s laughing through a lungful of smoke, close enough to choking as the door pushes open behind him. “Amen to that,” he says.

Arms wrap around his waist from behind and he doesn’t complain when Ian takes the cigarette from between his lips. He also doesn’t comment when Ian breaks his self-imposed break from smoking to inhale a deep lungful. He knows how much Gallagher must be needing it right about now.

“We all good?” he asks, leaning back into Ian’s arms.

“Yeah,” Eddie says and there’s a pause of him shuffling around a little more on the other end, sitting down maybe. “Thank you, Mickey.”

Mickey just grunts and hangs up, not much for goodbyes and knowing Eddie isn’t either.

“Everything okay?” Ian asks, flicking away the finished cigarette and tucking his face into the side of Mickey’s neck.

Mickey hums, “He just needed some advice on something.”

He reaches back and tucks the phone safely back into Ian’s jeans pocket. He manages to worm his fingers up inside of Ian’s sleeve, stroking along the smooth flesh of his forearm.

“They’re not…”

He shakes his head, staring out at the fallen canopy slowly dying on the cold earth. It feels almost poetic, but Mickey’s never been very good at words, so all his brain can come up with is _mulch_. It’s a pretty apt analogy of this whole situation though in some ways.

Eddie and Carl are going to come floating back to earth again at some point, trodden down until they’re forgotten about by the rest of the world. Mickey just hopes they don’t take the rest of them with them. He hopes those branches don’t stretch far enough to catch he and Ian underneath their shadow.

He doesn’t want to be a part of their mulch. Not when he’s already dragged himself up out of his own a long time ago.

He’s living in the skies now, but the truth is, it just means he has further to fall.

“It’s all good,” Mickey says, fingers gripping Ian’s forearm tight. “We’re all good.”

Against his back, Ian relaxes slowly, his breath rushing out across Mickey’s skin. “I love you, Mickey,” he says, holding on and surveying this little kingdom of decay along with him.

Mickey finds himself smiling and tips his head back until the only thing that matters in his eyesight is the red of Ian’s hair and the slope of his nose in his peripheral. “I love you, Gallagher,” he replies.

They both pretend they don’t hear the voices whispering behind them through the open kitchen door.


	18. Two Months and One Day from After

Carl counts the pebbles he throws at the metal slide until he loses count in the _ting, ting, clink_ of them hitting home.

He doesn’t want to go home, but he doesn’t want to go anywhere else either. So he just sits on a park swing as the day comes to a close around him. There are no children here, he’d probably leave if there was. They don’t need contaminating with his black mood, innocent as they are.

He doesn’t know what he wants, that’s the problem.

He wants Eddie. He wants Eddie to be happy. _He_ wants to be happy. Here, anywhere. It doesn’t matter, but he’s worked out by now that happy means Eddie needs to stop.

He wouldn’t change Eddie for the world, but he’s selfish enough to want to ask him to just tweak this part of himself a little. For Carl. For them.

It feels like such a small thing and a huge ask all at once.

He thinks of those sales people on the phone for charity. _Don’t ask, don’t get_. But when you’re ringing someone to upgrade their hundred dollars a month subscription to something more, don’t you just feel like you’re asking too much already.

Doesn’t matter if they’re a doctor or a billionaire or what. A part of you still feels shitty. Even if they say yes.

Not that Carl’s ever done a job like that. Nobody would trust him with someone else’s bank details. He’d heard Fiona talk about it once though, watched a program set in a call centre with too many bad Welsh accents and just thought.

He doesn’t that sometimes, contrary to popular belief, he just thinks.

His hands are cold, which is ridiculous because the weather isn’t. He itches, _aches_ for a cigarette but there’s none in the pack. He smoked them all already.

Maybe that’s what Eddie feels.

Like he’s itching, hands shaking with the need to kill, to feel the blood dripping off the tips of his fingers, but he’s already used up all of his luck for the month. Has to wait, pass go without collecting $200 and try again another time.

It’s shitty what Carl equates human life down to now.

He was never that child to watch the News and hear about people being jailed for murder and thinking, “ _They should hang the bastard.”_ He never gave it much thought either way, but now… now that bastard could be Eddie, could be someone just like Eddie and he’s stuck in the wondering of if he could argue with someone to spare his life.

If it was right or not.

An innocent against Eddie and Carl knows who he would pick, every time.

Does that make him just as bad? Probably.

He doesn’t feel the same thrill, but he doesn’t quite feel the guilt either. He just feels nothing. He’s death inside to it. And it doesn’t quite matter that he knows Eddie wouldn’t kill a child or a teenage girl who just happened to be passing by.

He wouldn't kill a Liam or a Debbie or even a Fiona, not unless they deserved it.

He knows the sort of people that Eddie kills. Muggers and rapists and drug dealers.

But Carl has been friends with those sorts of people too. Yeah, some deserve it, but others… it’s a weird line. It’s a blurred line. One he doesn’t think about, because when he starts to try and pick and choose whose worthy, he probably won’t like which category he falls into.

So he doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t think about why out of all of them he’s been spared.

It’s something that he and Eddie have never really talked about. Even after all these years. There was no _why me_ conversation, and not because Carl was scared of the answer or because he didn’t want to know. He just didn’t see why it mattered.

It’s like how Ian doesn’t seem to question that he and Mickey are it now. He just knows they are, accepts it. It’s easier that way.

Still, Carl sits on the swing and rocks slightly back and forth, the chains creaking loudly in that way swings always do. Or at least, all the swings he’s ever sat on. He can’t help but wonder about the blood on Carl’s face last night, about the story behind it.

He can’t help but wonder if they went quick, if they had family.

Almost everyone matters to someone, don’t they?

 _What would you do if you found out Eddie killed someone you knew?_ Carl wonders and he shakes that thought out of his head just as quickly as it comes.

 _Does this mean you’re done?_   That one goes just as quickly, it’s ridiculous to think about. He can’t even entertain it. But he knows something has to change.

Sure, he’s long since faced the fact that this will probably be the death of him. Not in the way people might expect, it won’t be at Eddie’s hands, but it will still be the end of Carl Gallagher and he knows it.

He might have long since faced that, but it doesn’t mean he’s just willing to sit back and let it play out. He’s going to have some influence in his own life if it kills him… _heh_. _Get it?_

His brain just feels like it’s going around and around in circles, like a dog chasing its tail, just as aimless as that. But he can’t stop and he doesn’t want to move. Not yet.

He doesn’t want to go back to Eddie and have to feel like he has the answers when he really doesn’t. He’ll sit here all night if he has to.

“Hey.”

He jumps out of his skin, turns to look at the girl lowering herself onto the swing beside him. She’s tall with just the right amount of curves. Gorgeous blonde hair and eyelashes so long that it’s the only thing he can look at on her face. She’s beautiful and in any other life, years ago, he would have been hitting on her in a heartbeat.

“Penny for your thoughts?” she asks and Carl really never got that phrase. “You look like you’re brooding up a storm.”

He shrugs.

He’s not sure if he wants her to go away or not, but he also doesn’t know exactly what she wants him to say. They don’t know each other. It’s like people in this town forget that key fact when just marching on up to each other to have a chat.

“Okay then,” she says, unperturbed. “Well, I’ll tell you my dilemma of the night then and you can tell me yours.” When he doesn’t say anything, she just carries right on. “Thought I’d take the scenic route home after work and there’s this boy looking mighty sad on a swing. So I think, I’ll have a closer look and guess who it is. It’s this kid I used to know way back when who was the sweetest thing I ever knew, who just cuddled when I said I didn’t much like sex.”

Carl startles and forgets the whole murder and secrecy shit he has going on right now when he whips his head around and says, “ _Bonnie_!”

She laughs and he’s suddenly twelve again and remembering all the reasons why he fell for her in the first place. “Got it in one,” she says. “Long time no see, Gallagher.”

He scoffs a little, but there’s no real venom behind it. “You mean since you took off because I said I liked you?”

She blushes a little. Years ago, he would have felt like that was some great achievement. Now, now he just smiles. “Was hoping that wouldn’t come up,” she says, honestly. She scratches the back of her neck and her hair shifts, shimmers a little in the watery yellow of the streetlights over ahead. “So, what’s your damage, Carl Gallagher, come on.”

He finds his tongue unsticking because this is Bonnie. Bonnie, who might as well have been his best friend. Before Eddie and after Little Hank.

He’s always been attracted to chaos he’s starting to realise in hindsight. It’s not that surprising.

Because it’s Bonnie and Bonnie has done enough fucked up shit to fill a hundred books – and that’s just what he knows about – he says, “Had a fight with my boyfriend.”

She looks surprised for a split second, but then not at all.

Maybe everyone saw this coming but Carl. Maybe Carl even saw it coming. After all, he never really had much of a freak out about the whole bi-sexual thing.

“The ‘ _we’re done_ ’ kind, or just a spat?” she asks.

He doesn’t know.

“We’re not done,” he says confidently, because if nothing else, he knows that much. Still, it’s not quite a spat either. Spats are the sort of things couples have over shit like whose turn it was to do the dishes.

He doesn’t think he or Eddie are ever going to have _spats_.

Because if they ever fell out over shit like that, Carl would probably just smash up all of the plates, buy paper ones and they’d fuck their aggression out right on the shards. That was their sort of fucked up, their way of dealing with shit like that. They didn’t need to be that petty.

But maybe that made it worse when they did have arguments. Not that there were many, but there was that one all those years ago, when Eddie thought Carl had been trying to back out to fuck another girl and they’d screamed at each other until neither of them had had the words anymore.

Of course, it had been resolved just the way they resolved everything and that had been the end of that.

This doesn’t feel like anything sex can just fix though. And he doesn’t want it to be either.

This isn’t about something small, this is about their future, about their lives and their freedom. Serious shit, basically.

“Well at least you know that much,” Bonnie says. He still can’t believe she’s here, but then… he isn’t really feeling all that surprised anyway. Bonnie’s always been this figure in his head that’s bound to pop up somewhere again along the way. Like some fucked up guardian angel or whatever the hell Disney movies are showing kids nowadays. “What were you fighting about?”

Carl sighs, stares up at the sky.

You can see the stars here, something you can’t do in Chicago.

Too much glare from the city lights, Ian had told him once. Just humans drowning out nature once again. Creating an endless stretch of black until their influence ended enough to let the light shine through.

“I want him to quit,” he says. Vague and specific all at once.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Bonnie raise an eyebrow. “Drugs?”

“Something like that.”

It’s an analogy that’s close enough.

“You gonna call it quits if he won’t?” she asks.

“I should,” Carl admits, because he knows he should. He knows in theory that he probably never should have gotten involved in all of this in the first place. Still, he wouldn’t change it for anything. “But no. Never.”

Bonnie huffs out a little laugh, like she isn’t surprised. “Don’t let him in on that fact or you’ll never get what you want,” she says. “Let him think you’ll leave and he’ll change.”

“That’s call manipulation.”

“Don’t we manipulate all the people that we love?”

Carl frowns, still staring up at the stars. So many little dots that are some massive so far away.

He thinks of how Frank would always manipulate Monica to get her to stay just a second longer. With drugs or children or empty promises.

He thinks of how Lip manipulates everyone, even them, even the people he honestly does love, just to get whatever he wants.

He thinks of how people manipulate Fiona and she lets them. Jimmy and Jimmy again, and then even Gus to an extent.

It’s all the examples of love that he doesn’t want to turn out like. It’s all the love he doesn’t understand. And maybe he doesn’t understand what he and Eddie have completely either, but he knows he won’t manipulate Eddie into anything.

They aren’t those people. Carl won’t be that person.

He won’t love Eddie like that.

He’s dialling before he even realises his fingers have moved. They’re warming as he grips the plastic, with each second he gets closer to hearing Eddie’s voice.

Eddie picks up breathlessly and it makes Carl almost smile at the thought of him diving on his phone. What had he been doing? Sleeping?

“What were you doing?” he asks, because now he wants to know.

“I was taking a piss.”

Carl tips his head even further back, swing creaking and legs lifting off the ground for a wonderful weightless moment as he laughs. He can picture it, that mad scramble. “You tied a knot in it?” he asks. “You can carry on if you want.”

He hears Eddie moving around, hears the sound of his zipper going down again and his piss hitting the bowl.

He laughs a bit more and then the smile drops off his face like his facial muscles have suddenly forgotten how to support it.

“I want you to stop, but I’m not going to manipulate you,” he says. Feels like he’s confessing, like this is a big picture, movie finale moment. Lights, camera, action, murder. “I want you to stop for us, because I don’t want to lose this. But I’ll run with you if we have to. I’ll go if we have to, because I fucking love you. I fucking love you and I’ll chase you anywhere, but I want you to want to stop. For me. Us.”

It’s the most speech-like thing he’s ever done.

He means it though, every words.

“I want to try,” Eddie says with enough hesitation that Carl knows he’s being sincere. “I don’t know… I don’t know if I can. But, I want to try. I want to keep this too. You. I want to keep you.”

“You’re never going to lose me.”

That’s an impossible thing. Carl’s fast learning he doesn’t know how to function without Eddie. And he doesn’t want to try to learn.

He can hear Eddie smiling down the line. He can hear him zip his jeans up again. The toilet flushes because Eddie’s always padantic about that sort of stuff. Even if it’s just a piss.

There’s no: _If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down._

Not for Eddie.

There’s only, _If you drop your zip, you better get rid of it._

It’s something he and Carl have heated eyebrow conversations about. The arch of: “Did you flush it?” and Carl’s practical uni-brow response of: “Fuck. Fine.”

“You eaten yet?” Carl asks, even though he knows what the answer will be. “ _Chicago’s_ is open ‘til midnight. Got someone I want you to meet.”

“I’ll be ten,” is all Eddie says before he hangs up.

Carl tucks the phone back into his pocket and looks at Bonnie’s curious expression. “You fancy some pie?”

She smirks, “Not really. But I fancy meeting this man-candy crack whore of yours.”

“He’s not a crack whore,” Carl mutters, standing with a long creak of swing hinges. “And how do you know he’s man-candy?”

Bonnie gives him a look like, _bitch please._ She has got a point though, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out I'm Gonna be 500 Miles by Sleeping At Last. It's amazing. I've been listening to it on repeat.
> 
> [themintsauce](http://themintsauce.tumblr.com)  
> @BethCottrell  
> I even occasionally foray into SnapChat as themintsauce!


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